Slovenia were off to a good start, taking a 7:4 lead after twelve minutes, but the Germans recovered after a time-out to take a two goal advantage into the second half.

Slovenian headcoach Boris Denić was saving the team's top scorer Dragan Gajić for the second 30 minutes, but to no avail, as only Jure Natek presented a noteworthy threat to the strong German defence with 9 goals.

The Germans slowly extended their lead to 24:19 by the 42nd minute and calmly clinched seventh place overall, which secures a direct berth for one of three Olympic qualifying tournaments in April next year.

After group stage victories against Chile, Belarus and Brazil and defeats against Qatar and Spain, a top 16 victory against Macedonia and the subsequent losses to France, Denmark in Germany, Slovenia finished as the eight best team in the world in Qatar.

They can still make it to an Olympic qualifying tournament, provided one of the other European quarterfinalists of the worlds becomes European champion in Poland next year or if France beats Qatar in Sunday's final and also wins in Poland. Another possibility is Qatar losing to France and then defending their title of Asian champion.

"Given alls the events and problems from day one of the preparations, which I prefer not to discuss, eight place is a completely realistic result. We fulfilled our goal," coach Denić said after the Germany game.

Natek said that the team had performed well but still slightly below its full capacities, while his teammate Sebastian Skube confirmed that keeping the door to Rio open had been the goal and had also possibly been reached.

"I think this is a good result. We must not only see things negatively, we had too much of this at these championships," Skube added.